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My family and I have been witness to and beneficiary of amazing
providence in this week of Sandy. We are incredibly lucky. Seeing
the complete destruction of entire neighborhoods on the Jersey
Shore and in Staten Island and Queens and Hoboken only drives
that home. This morning my wife saw an aerial picture of the
shore town where she spent her young summers and was in shock:
whole neighborhoods she knew had disappeared.

In our neighborhood in central New Jersey, we benefitted from
acts of wonderful neighborliness. Our dead-end street was blocked
by more than two dozen large, fallen trees. Most of our neighbors
got together, got out their chainsaws, and proceeded to clear the
street and driveways all day Tuesday. (Friends and family will be
horrified to know that I, too, wielded my brand new chainsaw, but
they will be relieved to know that I managed to break it in short
order.) Our street is still blocked by a fallen utility pole but
we managed to get some cars around it, until our route turned
into a muddy trap, so we shuttle back and forth from this
barricade.

On
Monday night, as the winds of Sandy hit frightening velocity, a
tree fell against the back of our house but we were terribly
fortunate as it damaged the deck and roughed up the roof and some
gutters but did not breach our home. Another 15 or more trees
fell that night around our house — but fell away from it. (We
live in the woods, though that may now be singular rather than
plural.)

This was a fortunate story repeated up and down our block, where
far more trees fell than anywhere I’ve seen in our part of the
state (we live on what New Jersey calls a mountain, which
apparently accelerated the winds). At one home, a garage roof got
a bad gash but that was all. At another couple’s house, the wife
worried about a tree falling in the master bedroom and so she
moved to a grown child’s bedroom but the tree she feared fell
right on top of it, sending wood through the ceiling a few feet
above her head. She’s fine. Other houses were similarly hugged by
dying trees but overall unharmed. More important, of course, is
that all our neighbors were unharmed.

We live in an area with well water, which means that when we lose
power, we lose water and toilets, in addition to heat and —
thanks to being on Fios — the phone and, of course, the internet.
Also, our nearest cell towers appear to have suffered damage or
lost power, so we lost total communication in our house. Thus the
social media that I tout so much was not as useful to me as I’d
have thought. And now, after the storm, it’s still not giving us
the very practical information we crave: which streets are
blocked; where power is returning; when power will come to us;
what restaurants and stores are reopening; where to get gas….

But
I was lucky to have managed to make a hotel reservation and the
staff at our Marriott has been amazing, letting us extend our
stay and helping us with unfailing cheerfulness even though they
are harried and overworked and surely worried about their own
homes and families. At the restaurants that one-by-one reopen and
stores, we have found the staffs to be gracious and generous just
as we have found neighbors and strangers to be ready to help in a
moment. At our reopened mall today — instantly filled with
refugees from the storm — I saw a couple of guys commander
electric plugs with power strips so they could watch over folks’
gadgets as they recharged. Yes, crises bring out the best in
people.

There
are frustrations. We have no idea when we will get power back. I
have seen only *one* crew working within miles of our home. I’m
frustrated and worried that our downed utility pole has prevented
police and firefighters from reaching a home on our street with a
bad gas leak and I am concerned about our elderly neighbors being
out of reach of ambulances. Our police have been very helpful but
we haven’t seen much of our town. Sitting in gas lines, I’m
reliving my first big story as a reporter — the ’73 oil embargo —
and wonder at how little we’ve learned. I doubt I’ll be able to
get to the airport for a trip I’ll probably have to cancel and
without trains or bas, I have no idea how I will make it into New
York for my class on Monday; millions of commuters are in the
same bind. Frustration will surely grow as our powerlessness
continues for days and then weeks.

I’m also struck by our lessened investment in infrastructure and
standards. When we built the POTS — plain old telephone system —
we ended up with a system that assured us we’d still get a dial
tone (remember that?) in spite of any problem short of a cut
wire. Now, if you believe that weather could become more
frequently extreme, then our wires on polls and breakable
phone and internet systems and dependence on power to stay
constantly charged and connected make us feel only more fragile
at moments such as these.

But at the end of this long week, I am aware of one thought more
than any other: I am lucky.